


Our Bags Are Light, The Burden Heavy

by The_Passing_Queer



Category: Disney - All Media Types, Haunted Mansion (Ride), Phantom Manor (Ride), The Haunted Mansion (2003)
Genre: Afterlife, Death, Disney, Gen, Grief, Hitchhiking, Louisiana, Mourning, Recently Deceased
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:47:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26273584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Passing_Queer/pseuds/The_Passing_Queer
Summary: A one-off fanfic about the origin of the Haunted Mansion's trio of hitchhiking ghosts
Comments: 1
Kudos: 8





	Our Bags Are Light, The Burden Heavy

We’re standing by the edge of the road ––  _ road  _ might be too charitable, honestly. Pathway? There’s some gravel thrown down along the wheel ruts that indicate not only that this path had been driven before, but that someone had intended to return the same direction. 

We know that people have driven the path before. 

Anyway, we’re standing there, at the edge of the intended road. The wind winds its way through the holes in our clothes –– Phineas’ suitcoat isn’t much more than a pile of threads thrown over his shoulders at this point. To say nothing of Gus’ burlap sack of a shroud, the unhemmed edges above his feet fraying and falling apart as the wind whips them about his ankles.

And my shoes? Let’s not even discuss my shoes. 

We stand, suitcases in hand. We’d had more, when we set out, but something about losing your way on the journey teaches you to pack lightly, very lightly. A suitcase each, if you could call Gus’ bindle a “suitcase.” Turns out you don’t need many earthly possessions when –– well, you get it, I suppose.

Regardless, I’d filled my suitcase full enough that I couldn’t stand holding it for very long. Under the purple-grey of a dimming sky, I turn the case on its side, and sit down on it. I examine my roughed-up shoes. Most of my clothes are intact enough, including (oddly enough) the hat, which should have fallen off by now. But the shoes, they’d suffered a rough journey. One of the soles was torn from the bottom and hangs distended in the air, as I lift the foot. Easy enough to fix, once we landed somewhere else. But I hadn’t packed any nails in my suitcase.

Phineas is the only one trying to get any sort of conversation started. I’ve given a few polite replies, and Gus occasionally replies with a grunt of indication. But as we rest at the roadside, I am perfectly content to remain silent for the moment, allowing the dusk to transition to evening without comment. 

Gus stands closest to the gravel, his bare feet no worse for wear despite the lack of coverage. He’d been a jailbird, before all this, and the time behind bars has roughed up his skin and his morals something fierce. Who knows what he’s thinking now, gazing out on the horizon, holding the ball and chain in the crook of his arm.

The ball and chain...now that had confused Phineas and I. Once we had come to, Phineas and I were relieved to find ourselves more or less in one piece. Clothing in place –– torn, sure, but in place –– and belongings in place. Everything cool and airy, like the matter around us had taken on the properties of a rum-filled night out. Mere wisps of what it had been before. So where had the ball and chain come from? Gus tried in vain to remove it, Phineas having had the forethought to pack a saw among his bags. But the chain was the one thing in our possession that seemed to be entirely  _ there _ , rather than the smokey half-state of the rest of our belongings –– and our persons. 

So Gus had to carry it, truck it along all the way down the side of the road as we’d walked, another weight tying him to the world of Before, the world of what we Had Been, what we certainly Were No Longer.

Maybe that’s why he only brought the bindle, I suddenly realize. 

So we stand at the edge of what is allegedly a road, we three alleged travellers. Phineas tries to sell me on a game of gin rummy –– he’s discovered that his deck of cards is still in his breast pocket. He’d like me to stand up so he can deal out cards onto the surface of my suitcase. His own carpetbag is too soft, too formless to serve as a makeshift table. But I’m not of a mind for games just now –– I’ve nothing to bet, for the time being. 

Phineas calls out to Gus, still at the road’s edge. I’m surprised at Phineas for this continued attempt to bring Gus in. I’d weighed him to be an astute observer during our time in business together –– bond men often are, if they intend to make a name for themselves. But perhaps the recent transition had shifted his view of Gus and I. We are, as much as I can determine it, the same people as before. The same  _ spirit _ , I suppose. Phineas’ ability to read Gus’ distant gaze and monosyllabic replies as an indication of noninterest –– that wasn’t something that could be crushed against a tree.

A brain could, though. Or a torso. 

Phineas walks down the road, putting a good distance between Gus and myself. It’s not as though someone’s buggy will drive along soon, and we’ve nowhere to be anymore, so it could be a few minutes or an hour before Phineas returns, shaking his head. I wouldn’t understand the difference anymore, in how the time passes. I continue sitting, Gus continues standing. The wind keeps up its feeble pawing against our clothes. 

Returning, Phineas places an ear to the ground. There’s plenty of crabgrass and weeds punctuating the dirt, but he finds a clear spot and kneels. I momentarily consider doing the same, a second opinion on our prospects of rescue. But I trust Phineas to pick up a passing carriage, if it’s nearby. 

But as he kneels, I’m already casting doubt on the possibility. This is a back road, deep in the heart of Cajun Country. Even in a part of the world that trades on its inhospitable climate and topography, only the fearless –– or the quixotically dumb –– would face the uneven gravel pathway as remotely traverseable. So much could go wrong on a road like this one. The horses tripping over the pebbles, their uneven footing leading to broken legs, and wasted pistol ammunition to destroy them. The wheels rattling underneath the carriage itself, the wood warming and bending just enough, in the humid Louisiana air, to snap on a particularly rough patch of ground, grinding the journey to a halt.

Or worse –– there is always a worse. The trip could be smooth enough for a mile or two, enough to discount the possibility of collapse. Only for the ground to suddenly give way, plunging the horses into the dirt and tearing the worn leather straps from their muzzles. The carriage could careen off the road, over the grass and weeds of the barren ground, and towards the forest just off the side of the road. The occupants of the carriage feeling everything; feeling their teeth chattering, their arms clawing the walls in attempts to grip anything, the plunging of the stomach as the cypress approaches the cabin window, the sting of the glass as it rips past the surface of the skin –– and then feeling nothing at all.

No one would travel this road. 

I try to follow Gus’ eyeline –– he’s looking down the road in the direction we came. There’s nothing in view, though the hanging branches of the willows prevent me from looking too far. I have half a mind to check my own breast pocket, for the flask that was stashed there before. But this isn’t a time when rum would feel good. I’m trying to remain as awake and alert as possible. I need to know that we’re still here, at this roadside. That  _ I _ am still here, sitting on my busted suitcase and worrying over my worn-out shoe.

Phineas hops up, excitedly. He’s felt something in the ground. Carriages, he says. More than one, from the sound of it. Coming in the opposite direction that we came from. He runs to his carpetbag, to put things in order. 

I stand up, instinctively dusting myself off, or going through the motions of it. As I look over at Gus, he now has a hand outstretched over the road. Thumb extended. This is the plan we came up with minutes or hours ago, once we gave up on walking. I was against it, but Gus swears by the practice. Besides, he argued, who could harm us now?

Phineas, bumbling under the weight of his bag, bounds over to Gus and joins him at the gravel’s edge, extending a thick thumb into the air, with a dopey, inviting grin. He looks off at the unseen carriages, sure that they must be close at hand, if not in view.

Time stands still as I observe the two of them. The convict and the broker –– I haven’t the heart to add  _ former _ to either of their titles, not yet –– standing in the center of this vast emptiness, awaiting some unclear salvation. Gus turns away from his vigil, looking at me for the first time since. His eyes, grey in life, now seem to sparkle with an inviting reflection, like a mirror covered only by a heavy layer of abandoned dust. 

I join them at the edge, a skeletal thumb upraised. I’m waiting for the carriages to peak into view, striding out from the fog and willows like valkyries, emerging for our salvation. To carry us to the next place we can rest. Perhaps somewhere where we’ll finally receive answers about what happens now, in this liminal space beyond our mortal lives.

If you find yourself travelling down the gravel road, will you give us a lift?


End file.
